I am not in the market for a console (my last one was the Sega Mega Drive which was abandoned after we got a Pentium 1 PC and dialup), but I got to say, I love Nintendo’s pricing policy.

It’s almost as if they are taking the piss and want to see to what extent their fans are gluttons for punishment.

One possible complicating factor for those games? While they’re physical releases, they use Nintendo’s new Game-Key Card format, which attempts to split the difference between true physical copies of a game and download codes. Each cartridge includes a key for the game, but no actual game content—the game itself is downloaded to your system at first launch. But despite holding no game content, the key card must be inserted each time you launch the game, just like any other physical cartridge.

This is full on corporate regressiveness.

Nintendo will also use some Switch 2 Edition upgrades as a carrot to entice people to the more expensive $50-per-year tier of the Nintendo Switch Online service. The company has already announced that the upgrade packs for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will be offered for free to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers. The list of extra benefits for that service now includes additional emulated consoles (Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, and now Gamecube) and paid DLC for both Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8.

Wait so you have to subscribe to get access to emulators (which are all open source I am assuming)? And you can’t just buy a retro game (ala GOG) and play it to your heart’s content? You need a sub to Nintendo online?